Carpet Installation Coralville IA

Local resource for carpeting in Coralville. Includes detailed information on local businesses that provide access to carpeting services and carpeting contractors for carpet installation, remodeling or repair, as well as advice on carpeting options and green carpeting.

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Americans love new carpet. Our 240 carpet factories shipped nearly two billion square yards of it in 1999, of which 75 percent went into homes. The downside to all that redecorating can be seen in landfills, where every year some four billion pounds of carpet are dumped. Carpet is so bulky that it's estimated to account for 1 percent of the country's solid waste by weight and 2 percent by volume. That's clearly a waste of resources. Programs to recycle some of it have been around for years, but they haven't made much of a dent in the mountain of floor-covering waste.

Now, though, there are signs that the movement is gaining ground. DuPont, the inventor of nylon, became the first large-scale recycler of carpeting in 1991 by creating a network of collection sites across the country where used carpeting could be taken for the start of its journey back to usefulness. DuPont's push began largely as a marketing tool to appeal to homeowners who wanted to know that their old carpet wouldn't contribute to an environmental problem. In the past decade the company's network has grown to 80 sites that have collected and reclaimed more than 60 million pounds of carpet. Now DuPont has expanded its nylon-carpet reclamation center in Calhoun, Ga., to make it capable of sorting up to 50 million pounds of used carpet a year and producing a half-ton of recovered nylon per hour. That nylon can be put to a multitude of uses, from plastic automotive components to resilient flooring to carpet cushions. And the market is growing fast. DuPont isn't the only company interested in collecting old carpet. Other leaders in the effort include Evergreen Nylon Recycling, a venture of Honeywell and DSM Chemicals; BASF, which has been recycling carpet since 1994; and Collins Fri, 01 Mar 2002 00:00:00 By Smart-Homeowner Staff Ready, Aim- Nail http://www.smart-homeowner.com/node/8720 Pneumatic nailers, also called "nailguns" and "airguns," run off air compressors, so instead of trailing an extension cord, these tools trail an air hose.

The air in the hose is pressurized to around 120 pounds per square inch by the compressor. The nails typically come in a clip - a hundred or so nails held tightly together by adhesive and paper. The head of each nail has a clip notched out of it so the nail can fit shaft to shaft. The clip slides into the magazine below the handle, and a spring keeps them pushed forward so the next nail is always in position. The whole tool acts as an air chamber, even the handle you wrap your hand around. When you pull the trigger, the compressed air drives a piston in the head of the tool downward. A shaft at the bottom of the piston strikes the head of the nail and pushes it out of the tool and into the wood. The in-rushing air from the hose first pushes the piston back up into position and then re-pressurizes the air chamber for the next shot. As the shaft slides up out of the way, the spring in the nail magazine pushes the clip forward, sliding the next nail into position under the shaft. Most nailers produced these days have a depth-of-drive adjustment at the nose of the tool.

It's typically a threaded rod that you can turn to change the point at which the safety engages. If the nails are driven too deeply into the wood, thus weakening the joint, dial it out so the drive shaft stops the nails right at the wood's surface. If the nails aren't getting driven all the way down, turn it the other way to lower the point where the nail's head stops. Firing Mechanisms If you could fire a pneumatic nailer just by pulling the trigger, it would probably be too dangerous to use. The risk of hitting the trigger while carrying or positioning the tool is just too high. So every tool has an additional step in the firing process. A metal safety extends beyond the nose of the tool where the nails come out. To fire a nail, the user first has to press the nose of the tool down to the work surface, compressing the spring that holds the safety in place. This activates the trigger, allowing the user to squeeze it and fire a nail.

What happens after the shot depends on which type of firing mechanism the tool has. Pneumatic nailers come with two types of firing mechanisms: restrictive trigger and bounce-fired. The restrictive trigger (also called a sequential trigger) is probably safer and is a little slower to use. With this system, after a nail is fired, the user has to release the trigger fully, reposition the tool, compress the safety and pull the trigger again to fire the next nail. This sequence eliminates double firing, a common problem with pneumatic nailing. When the nailer fires, the tool often recoils a little, jumping up off the wood. Because you're applying pressure to keep the safety compressed before the shot, your muscles continue to press down after the shot, and if the tool recoils far enough for the safety to extend fully, the safety will compress again as it hits the wood and - bang! - you've got a double fire, two nails in approximately the same spot. This may not be a big deal when you're framing, but if you're nailing down some expensive redwood decking, a double fire looks pretty ugly. With a bounce-fired nailer, however, double firing is the whole point. On these tools, the user doesn't have to release the trigger to reset the firing mechanism.

As long as you keep the trigger depressed, you can simply lift the tool off the wood, reposition it and compress the safety in another spot to fire a nail. These tools are used mostly by professional carpenters for nailing off large expanses of plywood on floors, exterior walls and rooftops. These guys use the recoil of the tool to help them move the nailer to the next firing position, bouncing it along a joist, stud or rafter, firing a nail with each bounce. This is fine for fast nailing but a little more dangerous on the jobsite. The problem is that people have a tendency to carry a nailer with their finger on the trigger, so anything that hits the safety can fire a nail. Stories abound about people firing nails into their co-workers, even their own legs. I know one unfortunate guy who misjudged a bounce and nailed his own foot to the roof. Bounce-fired tools exist for a reason - production building, where speed is everything - but stick to restrictive trigger tools for work around your house.

To Shoot or Not to Shoot? Whether you should invest in buying or renting a pneumatic nailer for your next project depends a lot on the size and type of the project. Building a deck or fence typically requires several pounds of nails, so using a pneumatic framing nailer speeds the project and gives your hammer arm a break. A framing nailer typically shoots nails 2 to 3 inches long. Applying wainscoting or other decorative wood trim indoors is a good reason to get a finish nailer. Apart from the sheer volume of nails to drive in trim projects, a carefully positioned piece of crown molding is much more likely to stay in position while you pull a trigger than while you line up a nail and hit it a few times. Most finish nailers can handle nails from about 1 to 2 inches long.

If you spend time building toys, picture frames, or similar crafts in a home shop, a brad nailer is a good fit. These smaller, lighter tools drive tiny nails, typically from 3/8 to 1 inch long. Remember that you'll need a compressor and some hoses, too. A compressor needs to be matched to the air requirements of the nailer it powers, not so much for driving the nails, but for keeping up with the demand for air. While a small compressor will run a brad nailer just fine, you'd have to pause after every couple of shots to wait for it to provide enough pressure for a framing nailer. A 3-hp compressor will run a framing nailer without making you wait for air. Options Be sure to check your local codes regarding fasteners before you begin any large projects; some high-wind areas forbid the clipped-head-style nails that come in clips and require you to use full-head nails, which have greater resistance to being pulled out. You can still use a pneumatic nailer, but you'll need to get a coil nailer.

These have round drums under the handle instead of a straight magazine. The full-head nails are brazed onto wires that hold the shafts. The strips are then coiled up to fit in the drum, and the nails are fed into the tool by a small feeder pawl that advances the strip after each shot. If you take the plunge and buy a compressor, you'll soon discover a wide variety of pneumatic tools out there. You can find roofing nailers, which fire the short, wide-headed nails for holding asphalt shingles in place. A little harder to find are drywall nailers for nailing off wallboard. These two types of nailers rely heavily on a consistent air supply and carefully adjusted depth-of-drive to avoid either driving a nail through a shingle or ripping the paper off the drywall.

Several companies make pneumatic nailers for installing hardwood tongue-and-groove flooring. These tools fire either nails or staples at an angle into the top edge of the tongue down into the subfloor. The tool has a notched plate on the bottom that engages with the edge of the piece of flooring to ensure that it lines up properly. There are also many styles of pneumatic staplers that you can add to your collection. A compressor that can run a framing nailer should be big enough to run a pressure washer, too. Despite their potential for injury, these tools are only dangerous in careless hands. You and anyone else on the jobsite should wear safety glasses. Read the safety instructions that come with the tool and make sure you understand how each feature works.

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